With enough force to pull out a few strands of hair, Magister Marrow wrenched down his hands. “This is more than speculation. Hexin Marrow’s book suggests that the eighth Decimate—and perhaps only the eighth—can be used in this way. But it does not reveal the secret. The investment or preparation. The sending of theurgy to a distant instrument. Perhaps my ancestor did not know it. Or he did not live long enough to learn it.”

At once, several people started talking simultaneously. Like the two servants, the devotee of Spirit and her companion listened intently. Magister Rummage looked like he wanted to howl. Magister Avail uncovered his face, gaped in dismay, then closed his eyes. The other theurgists could not contain their surprise and distress.

Only the small woman standing near the librarian’s table betrayed no reaction. Her blankness no longer resembled timidity. It suggested tightly controlled fear.

Queen Estie felt the same apprehension. She had permitted those priests. Allowed them to establish themselves in Amika. Even encouraged King Bifalt to follow her example. Directly or indirectly, she had enabled their crimes.

Her husband had been wiser. He had been suspicious from the first.

Then the librarian cut through the mounting clamor. Harshly, he demanded, “Did you examine his body, Queen? The priest who was killed?”

His force silenced the assembly. It stunned Estie. At that instant, she could not have responded to save herself.

But Commander Crayn had sworn to protect his Queen. He did not hesitate.

“If you were capable of courtesy, Magister,” he said like iron, “you would not ask that question of Amika’s Queen. Her friend was murdered in front of her. Magister Facile died in her arms. I examined the body. Father Knout had only the clothes on his back. A small number of coins in his purse. And this.”

From a pouch at his belt, he took out a small cross on its chain, a cross marked by one stark ruby. Like an act of defiance, he tossed it toward the blind man.

Following its flight with senses other than sight, Magister Marrow caught it. As soon as his fist closed on it, however, he gasped. In almost the same motion, he flung the cross and chain at Magister Rummage.

The hunchback snatched them out of the air. Without glancing at them, he put them away inside his robe.

Flexing his burned or stung fingers, the librarian croaked, “As I said. An instrument.”

Estie had never been in a Church of the Great God Rile, but the tall cross there had been described to her: a heavy crucifix with a naked man sculpted on its back, his arms dangling over its crosspiece, his eyes like rubies staring out at his worshippers.

Each of Rile’s priests must have worn a little replica of that cross.